Also known as foamed asphalt recycling or cold in-place recycling, the technique is environmentally safe because nearly 100 percent of the old road surface will be recycled, says commission spokesman Joe Donnelly. Little or no dumping of waste materials will be required.

Instead, the old asphalt will be removed from the bridge, pulverized, then injected with the water and hot liquid asphalt, resulting in the foam.

It’s the first time the commission has used foamed asphalt — but it may not be the last time it’s used in New Jersey. State Department of Transportation officials intend to keep an eye on the progress of the project.
That’s as the state confronts a lengthy list of needed infrastructural repairs.

About 10 percent of New Jersey’s bridges are considered structurally deficient and in need of repairs, according to American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 report card.

Meanwhile, the society has graded more than a quarter of the state’s bridges — 1,717 out of 6,554 — as functionally obsolete, meaning they no longer meet current standards.

We’ve been hearing these statistics for some time now. It’s akin to the cry of “wolf” that no longer raises much concern. With most of the country in the same circumstances — the nation’s bridges earned only a C+ overall on the engineers’ report card — it’s easy to be blasé about the situation.

That’s until a bridge collapses, such as the interstate highway span in Washington state last month. Plunging vehicles into the Skagit River, 160 feet of that weakened bridge collapsed when a truck’s oversized load struck a girder.

It should be a wake-up call, warns Debbie Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

And it should be a call we heed.

We can invest in repairs to the infrastructure, or wait until one of those 651 structurally deficient bridges in this state gives out.